The Inspiring Connections Blog

In this post, I would like to help spread the word about various resources related to current evidence-based guidelines and ideal practices regarding care pathways and treatment approaches to assist those who have experienced a traumatic brain injury whether mild, moderate, or severe.

In this post, you will find an impressively non-exhaustive, small, fluid compilation of links to guided loving kindness meditation practices generously recorded and offered by various individuals for personal use. Some of the meditations are focused primarily on the practice of offering loving kindness to oneself, while others include the practice of offering loving kindness to oneself and others.

Practicing noticing goodness does not mean the invalidation or denial of all that is in contrast (and stark contrast) to goodness (to kindness, beauty, generosity, hope, wonder, awe….). Practicing noticing goodness is simply practicing noticing goodness. It is the cultivation and allowing of noticing, breathing in, savouring, appreciating, even celebrating, of goodness in any given moment—without minimizing or dismissing it and without inserting any other add-ons, at least/even if just for a brief while.

AskForHelpToday.ca is a free, referral service offered by the Ontario Psychological Association that helps people looking for services provided by registered psychologists and psychological associates working in the private sector in Ontario to find them. Primary care providers such as physicians can also refer patients to this psychologist-and-psychological associate-matching-service using their electronic medical record platform (see news release here).

I had the pleasure and good fortune to experience Jann Arden and accompanying musicians in concert this week. It was wonderful. For this post, I offer four lines of lyrics from her song, Good Mother—lyrics that stayed with me after the show (among others). Reflecting, I thought of life; of the journeying humans do; of various people I have met; and of you, too, readers.

I will also post below a video Jann has shared of a live-streamed performance of this song, which you can find on her youtube channel.

If you have the opportunity to see her on tour, I whole-heartedly recommend doing so.

Today during the winter solstice, I had the pleasure of witnessing a symphony of trumpeter swans and geese creating music together. Their music echoed into the stillness of the surrounding landscape while the sun lowered and set beyond the horizon. It was magical.

Also today, a poem by John Welwood came to mind. Some lines from the poem include

Life includes (or can include) really hard things and awful things, in various places and at various times. Life also includes (or can include) things that are beautiful, often profoundly. One of the things I like about the photographs below is how they include a mix of both shadows, stormy tones, and also vibrancy and light—each apparently juxtaposed with the other.

“We have to open ourselves up to receive what wants to shine back.” — Jessica Dore.

I came across this line recently in the book, Tarot for Change, by Jessica Dore (2021, p. 17). It’s a sentence that has lingered.

There are questions and curiosities that might naturally follow from a sentence like this. Among them are curiosities such as: in any given moment, am I opening or closing right now? In what ways? (And is this opening or closing wise, helpful? Is it helpful in some ways and not in others?)

I think a lot about plants. I think a lot about the interrelationships between things. Take for example, water. Take for example, the absolute necessity of swamps to support well being.¹ Take for example, pollinators. Take for example, how, if you don’t have conditions that support the well-being of pollinators, you don’t have all manner of foods and wonderful and necessary things.²

Whatever you are experiencing in this particular moment, may you feel with you the good company of a kindness or loving energy, and/or the strengthening energy of an expansive sky.